The History of BRL-CAD ====================== WARNING ** NOTICE ** WARNING ** NOTICE ** WARNING ** NOTICE This information contained in this file is retained entirely for historic reference until someone gets around to writing up a proper "history" of BRL-CAD. The numbers, features, and requirements quoted below were true when they are written but are very much no longer true today. Do not rely on any information contained in this file. WARNING ** NOTICE ** WARNING ** NOTICE ** WARNING ** NOTICE The BRL-CAD PACKAGE Short Summary In FY87 two major releases of the BRL-CAD Package software were made (Feb-87, July-87), along with two editions of the associated 400 page manual. The package includes a powerful solid modeling capability and a network-distributed image-processing capability. This software is now running at over 300 sites. It has been distributed to 42 academic institutions in twenty states and four countries including Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, USC, and UCLA. The University of California - San Diego is using the package for rendering brains in their Brain Mapping Project at the Quantitative Morphology Laboratory. 75 different businesses have requested and received the software including 23 Fortune 500 companies including: General Motors, AT&T, Chrysler Motors Corporation, Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed, General Dynamics, LTV Aerospace & Defense Co., and Hewlett Packard. 16 government organizations representing all three services, NSA, NASA, NBS and the Veterans Administration are running the code. Three of the four national laboratories have copies of the BRL CAD package. More than 500 copies of the manual have been distributed. BRL-CAD started in 1979 as a task to provide an interactive graphics editor for the BRL target description data base. Today it is > 100,00 lines of C source code: Solid geometric editor Ray tracing utilities Lighting model Many image-handling, data-comparison, and other supporting utilities It runs under UNIX and is supported over more than a dozen product lines from Sun Workstations to the Cray 2. In terms of geometrical representation of data, BRL-CAD supports: the original Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) BRL data base which has been used to model > 150 target descriptions, domestic and foreign extensions to include both a Naval Academy spline (Uniform B-Spline Surface) as well as a U. of Utah spline (Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline [NURB] Surface) developed under NSF and DARPA sponsorship a faceted data representation, (called PATCH), developed by Falcon/Denver Research Institute and used by the Navy and Air Force for vulnerability and signature calculations (> 200 target descriptions, domestic and foreign) It supports association of material (and other attribute properties) with geometry which is critical to subsequent applications codes. It supports a set of extensible interfaces by means of which geometry (and attribute data) are passed to applications: Ray casting Topological representation 3-D Surface Mesh Generation 3-D Volume Mesh Generation Analytic (Homogeneous Spline) representation Applications linked to BRL-CAD: o Weights and Moments-of-Inertia o An array of Vulnerability/Lethality Codes o Neutron Transport Code o Optical Image Generation (including specular/diffuse reflection, refraction, and multiple light sources, animation, interference) o Bistatic laser target designation analysis o A number of Infrared Signature Codes o A number of Synthetic Aperture Radar Codes (including codes due to ERIM and Northrop) o Acoustic model predictions o High-Energy Laser Damage o High-Power Microwave Damage o Link to PATRAN [TM] and hence to ADINA, EPIC-2, NASTRAN, etc. for structural/stress analysis o X-Ray calculation BRL-CAD source code has been distributed to approximately 300 computer sites, several dozen outside the US. With the addition of the PATCH geometry, requested and funded by the JTCG, the BRL-CAD environment will provide the superset environment of the combined Army/Navy/Air-Force vulnerability communities. The BRL is now working with the Intelligence Community (led by the CIA) to provide a uniform geometry/attribute/interface capability together with a large library of target descriptions to support the ATR and exploitation community. A super-set of the current BRL-CAD environment is the leading candidate for that role. ---- To obtain a copy of the BRL-CAD Package distribution, you must send enough magnetic tape for 20 Mbytes of data. Standard nine-track half-inch magtape is the strongly preferred format, and can be written at either 1600 or 6250 bpi, in TAR format with 10k byte records. For sites with no half-inch tape drives, Silicon Graphics and SUN tape cartridges can also be accommodated. With your tape, you must also enclose a letter indicating (a) who you are, (b) what the BRL-CAD package is to be used for, (c) the equipment and operating system(s) you plan on using, (d) that you agree to the conditions listed below. This software is an unpublished work that is not generally available to the public, except through the terms of this limited distribution. The United States Department of the Army grants a royalty-free, nonexclusive, nontransferable license and right to use, free of charge, with the following terms and conditions. --- BRL-CAD was principally architected and started by the late Mike Muuss after something of a dare in 1979. Earl Weaver (also of BRL at the time) bet Muuss that he couldn't display the XM-1 tank design (a prototype for the M1 Abrams) on a new graphical display terminal that had just been acquired. About 48 hours later, Mike had the display up and drawing a wireframe model. Within a day after that, military generals were being flown in and escorted into the research lab to see the design of the new tank. It was the first time anyone had ever "seen" the new design outside of some drawings. In 1972 plans for a new tank were decided on, and development contracts were awarded in 1973. In November 1976 the Chrysler prototype was selected to enter Full Scale Engineering Development with Chrysler being awarded a three year US$196.2 million contract to build 11 XM1 pilot vehicles, the first of which was completed in February 1978. "Designed in the 1970's by the Land Systems Division of the General Dynamics Corporation in response to the U.S. Army's MBT-70 program, the first M1 rolled off the assembly line in 1978. After two years of acceptance trials, the first of these vehicles was delivered to the US Army on February 28, 1980." [1] The XM1 was accepted for full production in February 1981 and named after General Creighton W. Abrams, former Army Chief of Staff and a battalion commander of the 37th Armored Battalion of the 4th Armoured Division during World War 2, and a key supporter of the XM1 programme. Development on BRL-CAD as a package subsequently began in 1983; the first public release was made in 1984. BRL-CAD became an open source project on 21 December 2004. BRL-CAD now continues to be developed and maintained by a core community of open source developers ever since.